Gujarat government rolls out healthcare scheme for poor

AHMEDABAD: Gujarat government has rolled out healthcare and health insurance schemes for 1.8 crore poor who can be treated free for critical diseases. The state will also provide a health insurance cover of up to Rs 2 lakh per family to the economically weaker sections. It will also bear part of the transportation cost of the poor.

The move is likely to counter the announcement of affordable healthcare by Opposition Congress party, made last week ahead of the assembly elections later this year.

The state government scheme, Mukhyamantri Amrutam (MA) Yojana - Gujarat, will cover surgeries for cardiovascular diseases, neurosurgery, burns, polytrauma, cancer (Malignancies), renal and neo-natal diseases. The state government will empanel public, private and trust hospitals for the conducting surgeries. It will cover 38 lakh families classified as Below Poverty Line (BPL).

About 15 lakh families will be enrolled on Tuesday and the rest will be accommodated by the end of the month. 'Any person can get his data fed at the taluka kiosk and his family will be enrolled that very day. Information like the thumb impression and other biometric data will be fed electronically," said Harit Shukla, project director of the scheme. All predefined medical procedures are part of the disease treatment packages. An enrolled BPL beneficiary may go to any of network hospital with a Quick Response (QR) Coded Plastic Card and get himself or his family member treated without making any payment to the hospital for the procedures covered under MA. The transactions for the treatment of inpatients shall be cashless.

Each BPL family (five members) will also be covered under an insurance of Rs 2 lakh. The beneficiaries will also be given Rs 300 per hospitalisation with a ceiling of maximum Rs 3,000 per year will be reimbursed as transportation cost. The scheme will be implemented through State Nodal Cell (SNC) at the state level which will administer the scheme. Claims will be processed with the help of Arogya Mitras and district coordinators.

It must be noted that the Congress party had recently announced affordable healthcare as part of its manifesto ahead of the state assembly elections. It promised to reduce medical expenses by 70%, make availability of generic drugs compulsory in government hospitals and form a separate body to ensure free distribution of life-saving drugs to the citizens.

It has blamed Modi administration for the low per-capita health expenditure that resulted in high malnutrition rates, maternal mortality, infant mortality and low rate of institutional deliveries or child births in hospitals in the state. Gujarat ranks 13th in institutionalized deliveries and has nearly 50% married women being anaemic. Gujarat stands eighth in terms of life expectancy at birth, maternal mortality, improvement in decadal child sex ratio and seventh in terms of Infant Mortality Rates (IMR).